Abstract

The book, which has drawn praise for its inviting and accessible style, thoroughly examines the lobbying scene: the settings in which lobbying takes place, the types and styles of lobbyists, the broad range of approaches and techniques used by lobbyists, and the role and influence of lobbying in our system of representative democracy. A favorite among professors and students alike, The Third House is a great choice as a supplement for courses on state politics or interest groups.

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Rosenthal, A. (2001). The third house: Lobbyists and lobbying in the states Washington, DC: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: 10.4135/9781483345178

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

11 10 09 08 07 2 3 4 5 6

Typesetting and design by Blue Heron

Cover design by Gary Gore

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosenthal, Alan

The third house: lobbyists and lobbying in the states / Alan Rosenthal.—2nd ed.

Dedication

[Page v]

To Patrick, Kelly, Chas, Dylan, and Tori

[Page vi]

Preface

[Page ix]

When asked by friends and colleagues why I was writing this book, I usually explained as follows. I had studied and written about legislators for years, but legislators did not really appreciate my efforts. Then I wrote a book about governors and legislatures. To my dismay, I found that governors are oblivious to mortals who are not themselves governors, so no acknowledgment came from that direction either. It finally occurred to me that if I switched gears and wrote about lobbyists, I could at least expect free food and drink by way of appreciation. Some of my interviews with lobbyists—people who are alleged to be genetically programmed to pick up the tab—were conducted over breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It turned out, however, that I paid more often than they did. So much for my quest for acknowledgment.

Over the years, however, I got some of the acknowledgment I was seeking. People who read the first edition appreciated the book. Experienced lobbyists reported to me that it nicely captured their enterprise. New lobbyists found it helpful. Students thought it was interesting and offered a different perspective on lobbying. CQ Press apparently was satisfied, because Brenda Carter, director of college publications, persuaded me that a revision of The Third House would be well worth the effort.

I originally wrote this book to challenge the conventional wisdom about lobbyists and lobbying. That is not to say that lobbyists do not buy legislators meals or entertain them in other ways. They certainly do (much less nowadays than formerly), but there is much more to lobbying than that. Anyone who has spent as long as I have studying and consulting with legislatures would at some point have to become interested in lobbyists. The surprising thing is that it took a while for my interest to emerge. One of my early books, Legislative Life, ignored lobbying almost entirely—an enormous oversight. My latest book, The Decline of Representative Democracy, does not have the same deficiency.

A few years before writing the first edition of this book, I began to conduct, in collaboration with the State Governmental Affairs Council, a program [Page x]designed to enhance the professional skills of representatives of member companies and associations. This enterprise involved me in questions of direct lobbying, coalition building, grassroots mobilization, and ethics. It also brought me into contact with many lobbyists. Instead of catching a dread disease, however, I became more and more interested in the subject. Then, in 1990, I was appointed chairman of a New Jersey commission on legislative ethics and campaign finance. The members of the commission (four legislators and five citizens) examined the regulation of lobbying, among other matters, and made several recommendations for legislative action. My involvement with this commission further whetted my appetite.

The lobbying of state legislatures is in need of study. The media have a narrow, and even distorted, perspective on lobbyists and lobbying. The public's comprehension is likewise limited and unduly negative. In contrast, my firsthand observations and experiences have given me an appreciation for both the lobbyists I have met and the institution of lobbying. I have become one of the not-too-many people outside the field who believe lobbying to be an honorable profession. But then I also believe politics to be an honorable profession.

My original account of lobbyists and lobbying in the states was based largely on interviews with about one hundred lobbyists in California, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Texas, as well as a few in Maryland and Washington, D.C. Those interviews remain of value in this new edition, although I have cast a wider net this time and drawn on lobbying in other states as well. Lobbying life is described mainly from the point of view of lobbyists themselves. This vantage point is essential, I believe, for conveying a feel for the enterprise and for understanding what lobbying entails. But it is also important that we make judgments. Thus I have endeavored to step back, acquire distance, and analyze the practices and effects of lobbying and its role in representative democracy.

In writing this book (and also in its revision), I owe special thanks to individuals in several different communities. The first is the community of political scientists, in which I claim membership. Political scientists have by no means been idle in this area. They have produced a substantial body of knowledge on lobbyists and on the interest groups lobbyists represent. Their writings have been extremely useful to me, and their findings are reflected throughout this work. I am grateful to these colleagues and hope that this book contributes to the discipline. Several political scientists were of special help in my writing of the first edition. Allan Cigler of the University of Kansas and Clive Thomas of the University of Alaska read the [Page xi]manuscript and made a number of comments. Malcolm Jewell, Ronald Hrebenar, and an anonymous reviewer offered their critiques of my proposal.

Another community to which I owe a debt of gratitude is the state capitol community, consisting of legislators, legislative staff, lobbyists, and journalists from across the nation. These are the people with whom I have worked and about whom and for whom I have been writing. They have provided material for my book and are primarily responsible for my education—or miseducation—over these past years. I hope that I have helped in their education as well.

Without support from two other communities—the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, and the state of New Jersey, which has paid my salary—I would not have been able to devote myself to state legislatures as I have. I do not take for granted all the privileges we academics have. Academics are a fortunate lot. The late Don Herzberg, my predecessor as director of Eagleton, afforded me my initial opportunity, recruiting me just when the state legislative modernization movement was getting under way. Since then, Rutgers University has enabled me and the rest of us at the institute to take advantage of many opportunities to engage in public service and basic and applied research. I owe special and personal thanks to the institute's faculty and administrative and secretarial staff, and in particular to Chris Lenart, Joanne Pfeiffer, and Erin Toomey.

The publisher has also been helpful. I want to thank CQ Press, which I regard as the foremost publisher of books dealing with politics and government in the states. I trust that the present book in its revised form will advance that enterprise. It is always a pleasure to work with CQ's fine editorial staff.

Finally, I want to thank the most important and ultimately the most supportive community of all—family and friends. My children, who have taken on their own distinctive shapes, are a continuing delight and even an inspiration. I appreciate them and I like them—John, Lisa, Kai, and Tony. Also their spouses—Lisa, Garrison, and Kathleen. Who knows, perhaps one of my grandchildren—Patrick, Kelly, Chas, Dylan, and Tori—will turn out to be a lobbyist. Stranger things happen.

24. Generally speaking, unless a book, journal, periodical, or newspaper is specifically cited, the information (but not my own analysis) comes from the lobbyists I interviewed. This is not the first time that a political scientist, in order to acquire sensitive information, has assured a respondent anonymity. Nor is it the first time that the reader will have to trust in a scholar's integrity to report and use interview information accurately.

25. Remarks to Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (currently the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), Washington, D.C., November 4, 1991.

26. Allan J. Cigler and Dwight C. Kiel, The Changing Nature of Interest Group Politics in Kansas (Topeka: Capitol Complex Center, University of Kansas, June 1988), 21–23; Anthony J. Nownes and Patricia Freeman, “Interest Group Activity in the States,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 1996.

25. Ginger Gold, “Lobbyists: A Love Story” (New Brunswick, N.J.: Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, May 14, 1990). Gold later on worked as a lobbyist for Nancy Becker Associates and is currently a lobbyist with the New Jersey Education Association.

7. See Richard A. Armstrong, “Corporations and State Government Relations: An Overview,” in Leveraging State Government Relations, ed. Wesley Pedersen (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Council, 1990), 9–12.

8. Lusterman, Managing Business-State Government Relations, 4.

9. James E. Post and Jennifer J. Griffin, The State of Corporate Public Affairs: 1996 Survey (Foundation for Public Affairs and Boston University School of Management, 1997).

20. The waivers guarantee that the rental company will not sue customers if a car is damaged and add $12 to $15 a day to the cost of renting a car.

21. See Robert H. Salisbury, “The Paradox of Interest Groups in Washington—More Groups, Less Clout,” in The New American Political System, 2d ed., ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1990), 224.

6. It was important to specify all the possible codes, otherwise something would be missed. A lobbyist for a telephone company, for example, would key the word “utilities” because such bills can also be amended to apply to telephone companies.

7. Randy Welch, “Lobbyists, Lobbyists All Over the Lot,” State Legislatures, February 1989, 21.

8. This section on the Internet is based on Tom Price, Creating a Digital Democracy: The Impact of the Internet on Public Policy-Making (Washington, D.C.: Foundation for Public Affairs, 1999), 12–13.

9. A draft was provided to the author by Wade Hopping, a Florida lobbyist.

11. Keith E. Hamm, Charles W. Wiggins, and Charles G. Bell. “Interest Group Involvement, Conflict, and Success in State Legislatures,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 1–4, 1983, 16–17.

19. One of the reasons for the plight of the massage therapists was that they were listed in the yellow pages of the telephone book along with massage parlor therapists, a profession of a somewhat different order. In Iowa, for example, the former speaker (who was then working as a lobbyist) shepherded a bill through the house that would distinguish legitimate massage therapists from so-called massage parlors, which, the therapists claim, are little more than houses of prostitution. Des Moines Sunday Register, March 29, 1992.

2. John C. Wahlke et al., The Legislative System (New York: Wiley, 1962), 331. Also Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, 2d ed. (New York: Crowell, 1972), and Alan Rosenthal and Maureen Moakley, eds., The Political Life of the American States (New York: Praeger, 1984).

20. Robert H. Salisbury, “The Paradox of Interest Groups in Washington—More Groups, Less Clout,” in The New American Political System, 2d ed., ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1990), 203–229.

3. Anthony J. Nownes and Patricia Freeman, “Interest Group Activity in the States,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science [Page 239]Association, San Francisco, September 1996, Table 11.

1. James Q. Wilson defines a coalition very differently—as “an enduring arrangement.” And for him an alliance is a “temporary arrangement.” Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 267, 277–278.

27. It should be noted that the questions asked were introduced by the statement: “Estimates are that legalized sports betting would generate an additional 50–150 million dollars in added revenues to fund utility and prescription drug assistance for senior citizens.” This might help to explain the telephone survey's positive response rate.

1. Kay Lehman Schlozman and John T. Tierney, Organized Interests and American Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 150. The authors conducted a survey in which they asked federal lobbyists about twenty-seven techniques of exercising influence.

2. Anthony J. Nownes and Patricia Freeman, “Interest Group Activity in the States,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 1996.

22. James Richardson, Willie Brown: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 347–351. It should be noted that consumers were not satisfied with the “Napkin Deal” and a year later passed Proposition 103, which imposed drastic rollbacks on insurance companies.

17. Ibid., 132; also Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar, “Who's Got Clout? Interest Group Power in the States,” State Legislatures, April 1999, 31.

18. John A. Straayer, The Colorado General Assembly (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1990), 179–181.

19. Paul Brace and John A. Straayer, “Colorado: PACs, Political Candidates, and Conservatism,” in Interest Group Politics in the American West, ed. Ronald J. Hrebenar and Clive S. Thomas (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 56.

20. Robert H. Salisbury, “The Paradox of Interest Groups in Washington—More Groups, Less Clout,” and Aaron Wildavsky, “A World of Difference—The Public Philosophies and Political Behaviors of Rival American Cultures,” in The New American Political System, 2d ed., ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute 1990), 203–229 and 263–286.

Baumgartner, Frank R., and Beth L.Leech. Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and in Political Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400822485

Berg, John C.“Massachusetts Citizen Power and Corporate Power.” In Hrebenar and Thomas, Interest Group Politics in the Northeastern States, 167–198.

Berman, David R. Arizona Politics and Government: The Quest for Autonomy, Democracy, and DevelopmentLincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Salisbury, Robert H., et al. “Who You Know Versus What You Know: The Uses of Government Experience for Washington Lobbyists.”American Journal of Political Science33 (February 1989): 175–195. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111258

Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and John T.Tierney. Organized Interests and American Democracy. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.